


the point at which ice melts

by mostlikelydefinentlymad



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky Barnes Returns, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers Feels, Stucky - Freeform, a love confession seventy years in the making, addressing those double dates from way back when, and buckys real motives, stucky au where they actually talk about their feelings, you set a fire in my bones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-16
Packaged: 2018-04-26 15:08:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5009428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mostlikelydefinentlymad/pseuds/mostlikelydefinentlymad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I remember feeling like icycles were growing in my heart until I found you. </p><p>it's you and me, me and you.  we're still us.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the point at which ice melts

"I remembered you before I even knew my own name. I think maybe...I'm not sure but...I think you were more important to me than myself."

The confession is barely above a whisper as Bucky perches on their kitchen counter, idly tossing a clementine back and forth. Steve is putting on a teapot to boil because after decades of ice, neither of them can seem to get warm enough.

His movements are methodical and well timed - _fill the teapot, drop in teabags, collect mugs, listen to Bucky...OH._

Bucky keeps his eyes trained on the fruit as he rolls it in his palms then grips it a little too tightly so that juice drips out and covers his fingers in a sticky mess. Steve turns and watches, mesmerized, as Bucky lets it drip off of his right hand and onto the metal left one.

"I can't feel that, you know. I miss it...I miss pencil marks rubbing onto the side of my hand or holding a pencil in my hand, period."

Steve can hardly focus as his mind keeps replaying - _I think you were more important to me than myself._

"Why?," he asks as he stands to the side of Bucky, hip propped up against a chipped countertop that's littered with unfinished sketches to jog Bucky's memory, gum wrappers (gum seems to calm Bucky's anxiety), a set of keys, a pathetic looking bowl of fruit with only a few good ones left and a stack of black and white photo's of the two of them before the war.

Bucky stares back in confusion for a moment before darting his eyes back to the fruit as if it's the most important task in the world. Perhaps he's trying to remember what _sticky_ feels like.

"Why what?"

_What made me worth remembering?_

"You said you remembered me before you remembered your name."

Bucky smiles sadly and gives the fruit another squeeze so that the juice collects in his palm.

"There's a whole lot that I remember. I just don't...I don't say it out loud."

Steve blinks - "Why not?"  He feels like he's going round in circles.

Bucky shrugs - "Sometimes it feels like those memories don't belong to me."

Steve's heart shatters in his chest -

_this is what real pain is. not spending half my life in a hospital or on the brink of death. no. **this** hurts so much worse than any needle ever could. _

"They're _yours,_ " he insists.

Bucky shakes his head - "Yeah but...I don't know."

Steve understands.

"I have that problem too. I walked around for a good two or three years with all these old memories lodged in my head and they kinda felt like they belonged to someone else. A skinnier version of myself who might not like the person I've became."

Bucky is the only person that can break right through his walls. He learned a year ago (when he found Bucky) that repressing these emotions and trauma wasn't what they both needed. Bonding over their shared past and muddled future brought them closer than any deprogramming ever could.

"We're really something. We got this whole lifetime together that doesn't belong to either of us," Bucky scoffs. To keep his hands busy he carefully peels the rind off of the tiny orange fruit.

"We're still _us_ though. Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes - we've been that for ages."

 _It's you and me, me and you._ _  
_

Steve recalls many dark months where he struggled to find any piece of Bucky in this new body that didn't quite fit and a very lonely three month period where Bucky refused to have anything to do with him and so Steve had thrown himself into one dangerous mission after another in hopes that it would numb the pain. Still, even when they weren't physically together they were forever linked.

"Don't you mean Captain America and the Winter Soldier?," Bucky's voice drips with pain and bitterness as if the titles are an insult and his was, very much so. He didn't get a say so in it or whether he wanted to become Hydra's pet or not.

_you know I **don't**._

Steve moves closer and nudges Bucky's legs apart until he's standing in between them. He removes the ruined clementine and plops it down on the counter. Bucky wipes his hands on his sweats and keeps his eyes down.

"That's not us, Buck. It never was. Even when we were wearing masks it's still you and me behind them. For that matter...we wore them long before then, didn't we?"

Tear dampened blue eyes meet Steve's own and it feels as if the room has suddenly became colder somehow. It physically _hurts_.

"Still you were pretty good at that," Bucky sniffles as he swipes at his eyes impatiently, as if he's irritated at his body for betraying him.

Steve curls his hands around each of Bucky's wrists, loosely.  Bucky doesn't protest.

"How?"

_I've wore a mask since we first met, when we were just kids. I feel naked when I let my guard down and you? Oh god...I loved you. I was so afraid, **so** afraid._

"I don't know Steve...you just. You couldn't seem to show your emotions I guess."

Bucky strokes a metal thumb against Steve's arm, light enough that it nearly tickles and Steve has to resist the urge to scratch.

_keep doing that. you can touch me all you want, I don't mind._

"I'm working on that."

"I've got no room to talk though," Bucky confesses.

_what?_

"Of the two of us, _you_ were always the first to apologize so I disagree," Steve counters.

Bucky's legs are warm and pressed up against his ribs and he's finding it difficult to think of anything but those strong thighs and how, from the moment he'd saw the winter soldier, he'd felt drawn to him and his entire body had recognized him in the way that those who are in love never completely forget the curve of their beloveds body.

He'd spent more than half of his life trying his best _not_ to oogle Bucky's physique after coming out of a bath with towel hanging loosely around his hips or the exposed V of upper chest smudged with dirt when he'd rescued him and silently chastised himself for thinking those thoughts about a best friend who had very nearly died.

"Yeah...it wasn't that though. I mean the fact that its taken me over seventy years to...to get this far..." Bucky murmurs.

"In all fairness you went through a lot," Steve says, softly.

_hell of a  lot more than I did_

Bucky grits his teeth and presses his fingers against his temples but makes no move to put a barrier between the two of them. His chest begins to expand and contract faster than it had moments ago.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have..." Steve begins.

_shouldn't have what? loved you enough to drag you back from the edge even as you're only half alive? defend you against yourself?_

"Goddammit Steve it's not that, okay?" 

Steve is used to Bucky's temper by now and it comes in bursts now and then. He straightens his back and holds his chin up high, takes the angry words like a punch to the face because hes never been one to back away even when no one would've blamed him if he did. 

He places both hands, palms down, on Bucky's upper legs and waits. 

"I never wanted to go on those double dates, alright?" 

_...._

"But  _you're_ the one who set them up." 

Steve's head is spinning and he's pretty sure that if he hadn't been gripping Bucky tight he would've gone weak kneed.

Bucky exhales harshly through his teeth - "They were for _you_."

"But you enjoyed them too. Remember that science convention we went to in '31 and we stayed until it got dark outside because you wanted to see every single exhibit there?"

_and we ended up wandering off together until you realized we'd abandoned our dates so we searched them out and apologized_

Bucky's jaw works as he clamps his hands around the edge of the counter top.

Steve can feel the tension rolling off of him in waves, his legs taut against Steve's ribs.

"I wanted them to see what I saw in you is all," Bucky sighs.

_and they never did. wonder why that was?_

"You tried," Steve replies, with a reassuring tone.

Bucky laughs - harsh and biting. "I wanted....I wanted to take _you_ on a date."

_back up_

"And you did. Four of us, a double date," Steve replies.

_you're not implying that..._

Bucky groans and buries his face in his hands. "Listen close 'cause I'm not gonna repeat myself. **I** wanted to date...to date... **you**."

_and you never told me?_

Steve carefully removes Bucky's hands from his face and see's that he's a volatile mixture of layers and layers of pain spanning decades. He'd been hoarding this secret for longer than most people had been alive.

Steve takes each hand in his own and threads their fingers together - it feels natural, organic. As if nature herself had sculpted the shape of his hand to perfectly cradle Bucky's.

"You don't have to do this Steve," Bucky says, miserably. He attempts to free his hands but Steve holds on tight. Bucky could easily get out of this but he doesn't want to.

_bucky barnes, you're a real schmuck._

"What if I _want_ this? If you...still do that is," Steve mumbles.

He can feel the blush beginning at his feet and climbing its way up to his cheeks, like ivy wrapping around an oak tree.

Bucky swallows hard and meets Steve's gaze - he is as naked as he'll ever be and this is as hard as he'll ever love another person or ever has.

"I did. I do," he whispers.

_me? honestly...ME?_

"Show me," Steve murmurs.

His lips part of their own accord and he can't peel his eyes away from a pair of wet lips that are inching closer to his own, cautiously.

He folds his arms around Steve's waist and curls them up over his shoulder blades - takes a deep breath and, after 70+ years, he kisses his best friend.

_oh fuck...oh....yes_

Steve buries a hand in Bucky's hair and very carefully pulls the elastic out until it frames Bucky's face like it was always meant to be like that. He tosses it to the floor and cradles the base of Bucky's head, with his other hand he kisses back - open mouthed and slick.

He's feeling brave and he has did his share of waiting so he traces the seam of Bucky's lips with his tongue until they further part. Bucky moans against his mouth when Steve licks into his own. His entire body feels like Bucky is starting a fever in him with every stroke, every whispered apology, every breathy sigh.

He'll gladly go down in flames for Bucky Barnes, name a place and time - he'll be there.

Bucky desperately kisses back, deepening it - wet hungry kisses mixed with tender unspoken endearments. He kisses like a starving man who has found his salvation at last. Without breaking the kiss, Steve pushes up Bucky's t-shirt and allows his hands to roam and touch what was once forbidden. He is Adam standing in the garden of Eden with everything to lose - taking the risk anyways.

Bucky returns the favor and goes one step further - tugs off Steve's clinging t-shirt and then his own before pushing Steve down onto a couch (that Tony had picked out - it was bright red and mainly served aesthetic purposes but Steve wasn't about to complain about christening it for a damn good reason) and covering his body with his own - smiling every so often before sinking his teeth into sensitive muscles and licking odd places like the inner crook of Steve's elbow because he likes the way it makes Steve comes alive under him.

He wants to do the things that his mind reminded him that they used to do - making love (and it couldn't be anything less than that) on piles of blankets on the wooden scratched floor of their apartment with Steve arching against him and Bucky having to resist the urge to sketch him just like that...only that had _never_ actually happened. He'd dreamed it up out of pure carnal want and craving. He'd conjured it up even as he slept in a chamber with frosty air biting at his skin. Hydra had never fully erased Steve - only huge chunks but not completely. Steve Rogers is ingrained in his skin, his heart, his _everything_ and always had been. 

It is then that the teapot whistles and they both freeze - Steve with his hands hugging Bucky's ass under his sweats, Bucky all but panting against Steve's collarbone as he plants a kiss on every inch.

"I should..." Steve points a finger toward the kitchen.

Bucky clears his throat and reluctantly lets Steve brush past him. 

They're both disheveled with kiss bruised lips, hair mussed and half naked - boiling on the inside.

Steve turns off the burner and places the teapot to the back of the stove.

The minute he takes Bucky in his arms once more he realizes why hes been cold all this time - his body was mourning the loss of its other half. There's no need for hot tea and warm baths anymore - the chill in his bones melts away with every touch.


End file.
